Dieting to death: a black comedy of boarding school life
It sounds in bad taste, but Scarlett Thomas has written a riotously enjoyable novel about a boarding school full of…
A novel about depression that doesn’t depress: Starling Days, by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, reviewed
Rowan Hisayo Buchanan has achieved that rare feat, in her second novel Starling Days, of writing a convincing novel about…
An outsider inside: We, The Survivors, by Tash Aw, reviewed
It’s not immediately obvious who the survivors in Tash Aw’s formidable new novel are, or who the narrator even is,…
Cycle of violence: Blood, by Maggie Gee, reviewed
Maggie Gee has written 14 novels including The White Family, which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize (now the Women’s…
Biting political satire: China Dream, by Ma Jian, reviewed
Ma Jian’s novels have been banned in his native China for 30 years and he has been hailed as ‘China’s…
Love is blind, but lust is not; William Boyd’s 15th novel reviewed
William Boyd’s 15th novel begins well enough. In 1894 Edinburgh, a 24-year-old piano tuner is promoted to the Paris branch…
First Novels
Katharine Kilalea is a South African poet who has written a startlingly good first novel. OK, Mr Field (Faber, £12.99)…
Brotherly love
Jane Harris’s novels often focus on the disenfranchised: a maid in The Observations, a woman reduced by spinsterhood in the…
